Alternate Fate
by BurningTyger
Summary: Qui-Gon has a brief vision of the future -- one he will do anything to prevent. This is a repost under the author name that works, for Tyger has long since been deleted.


Title: Alternate Fate  
Author: Burning Tyger  
Author e-mail: amidalakenobi@hotmail.com  
  
SPOILER!!!!!!!: Slight for the Jedi Apprentice Trilogy, not enough to ruin anything. Basically, the river-stone is a good luck charm Qui-Gon gave Obi-Wan. It is Force-sensitive, and is always warm. There. You have been briefed.  
  
Disclaimer: All credit goes to the Great and Powerful Oz...er, George, who is not only cool enough to make the best movies ever conceived of, but then he goes and (reportedly) puts DARREN HAYES in them...Yep, we love the man. ***bow, bow, grovel***  
  
*...* denotes italics.  
  
  
  
Alternate Fate  
  
The red energy walls closed in between myself and the Sith, granting us a momentary reprieve from battle--and giving Obi-Wan a chance to regroup. Training under Yoda and then becoming a Master myself told me to use the short interim for meditation. It was then that the nebulous "bad feeling" I'd recently sensed revealed itself to me.  
  
~~  
  
Obi-Wan and I fought the Sith within the core room, forever skirting the edge of the central pit. Darkness overwhelmed me for an instant as the Sith's bootheel met my temple. I crashed into the wall, still upright but barely conscious. I heard one shout, then silence, and I forced myself to wake up.  
  
Never had a shock like this frozen me, not even when Xanatos fell from grace. Obi-Wan lay sprawled on the floor, a deep gash in his side, and the Sith now leered at me in triumph.  
  
I don't recall what came over me in that instant, what I was feeling when I saw my apprentice lying wounded on the deckplates. Madness, perhaps, or a cold fury that was certainly of the Dark Side. I do not remember killing the Sith, only watching in cool detachment as his body fell over into the core pit, split in two. My thoughts were only of Obi-Wan, and of the desperate ache in my heart, praying he was still alive.  
  
I cradled him in my arms, my Padawan, the boy I had come to look upon as my own son. I knew the wound was mortal, could tell by the look in his eyes that he knew it as well. He breathed in great, shuddering gulps, like a drowning swimmer trying desperately to stay afloat. Then I heard him say three words that I thought would never come from his lips, words that seemed so unfitting of him.  
  
"Master," he whispered. "I'm afraid."  
  
I didn't want him to know that I was, too. But after so many years, I could hide nothing from him.  
  
"You're...crying," he gasped weakly. "Don't. Not for me."  
  
I brushed his hair off his damp forehead gently, trying to offer all the tenderness I could in the last few minutes we would have together. His jaw trembled, but even now, he refused to cry. He tried to smile; to reassure me, no doubt, but I could see it was really a grimace of pain.  
  
"Better me...than you." Dying, and he was trying to console me!  
  
"No! I'd give anything to be dying now, if only you would live."  
  
"I could never train Anakin...I'm not *ready!* Stars, I'm just not ready..." He bit back the tears again, but not quickly enough; a single drop crept down his face, and he no longer had the strength to wipe it away.  
  
Not ready? To train Anakin, or to face the end of his own too-short life? "I'm sorry, my Padawan."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"I failed you."  
  
"No, I...failed *you.* "  
  
His eyes closed, and his head fell against my chest. For stars know how long I sat there, lost. When I found the will to move again, I touched the river-stone, still hanging at his neck like it had ever since his thirteenth birthday.  
  
It was cold.  
  
~~  
  
I opened my eyes, and in the last second before the doors swung open, I vowed to do whatever necessary to prevent that fate from happening--even if it cost me my own life. As soon as I cleared the doorway, I shut the timer off with the Force and closed the doors again. Obi-Wan pulled up just short of the last one.  
This was it. Right before the crimson blade pierced my chest, I looked in his eyes and knew I had done the right thing.  
*May the Force be with you...my son.*  
  



End file.
